To Matusz, Petco feels like home

After a 2-0 start, former USD star Brian Matusz has suffered through a seven-game losing skid with the Orioles. "I went through a bit of a tough streak," he says. Matusz pitches against the Padres at Petco Park on Friday.

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After a 2-0 start, former USD star Brian Matusz has suffered through a seven-game losing skid with the Orioles. "I went through a bit of a tough streak," he says. Matusz pitches against the Padres at Petco Park on Friday.

After a 2-0 start, former USD star Brian Matusz has suffered through a seven-game losing skid with the Orioles. "I went through a bit of a tough streak," he says. Matusz pitches against the Padres at Petco Park on Friday. (/ Getty Images)

The Baltimore Orioles were in San Francisco when word arrived that San Diego — the Birds’ next stop on their interleague tour of the National League West Division — had been hit with another earthquake. That made three temblors to strike while the Padres were either working out or playing a game at Petco Park this season.

“I was in San Diego for three years, never even felt a quake,” said Matusz, the Orioles’ young left-handed starting pitcher. “I guess I slept through a couple of them.”

The three years were those he spent at the University of San Diego, pitching his way to national prominence as a collegian, eventually becoming Major League Baseball’s fourth overall draft choice of 2008. Quite fittingly, Matusz gets the start tonight as the Orioles open a three-game visit to Petco Park, where he watched a number of games during three years at USD, but never pitched.

Some familiar surroundings and trips to his favorite Mexican restaurants — along with the Petco presence of many former college pals and family from Arizona — should bolster a 23-year-old pitcher who’s gone from 2-0 to 2-7 over the course of exactly two months.

“I went through a bit of a tough streak,” Matusz said. “It’s tough to work through things when you’re trying to get the best hitters in the world out. That’s the hardest part, really being able to slow the game down and just try to pitch my game. You’re gonna give up runs. It’s a matter of learning to overlook that.”

Fact is, Matusz has pitched well in three straight outings, low-scoring Baltimore losses to the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox and New York Mets. Consider that a year ago, give or take a week, Matusz was just being promoted from Class-A Frederick to Double-A Bowie. By the end of the summer, he had a ledger of 11-2 (and sub-2.00 ERA) in the minors and 5-2 record after his call-up to the majors.

Somewhere therein, too, a bit of a legend was born.

Around the same time the Padres were putting prized rookie pitcher Mat Latos on the shelf last September, O’s executive Andy McPhail was looking to do the same to Matusz. Just a few hours before game time, Matusz and fellow pitcher Chris Tillman had vanished from the locker room, slipped away from all the other Birds as a two-man expeditionary force.

“We were in the team store,” Matusz said. “Chris and I like to tour the new stadiums we go to and we realized we hadn’t really been around our own place (Camden Yards). So we went to see what jerseys the club was selling.”

The team store is in the famous B&O Warehouse, across the concourse from the playing field, and that’s where then-manager Dave Trembley and pitching coach Rick Kranitz located the two missing hurlers. The pitchers’ reaction when they returned to the clubhouse? Matusz’s reaction to the news he was being shut down?

“Hey, Andy, there’s no pitchers’ jerseys in the team store, no pitchers at all,” said Matusz, recounting his conversation with McPhail. “They’re all Brian Roberts, Adam Jones, Nick Markakis, position players. How come? When are we going to get some pitchers’ jerseys?”

In time. Everything in time.

That’s pretty much become the theme in Birdland, where the Orioles haven’t finished over .500 or higher than third in the wicked AL East Division since 1997. They arrive for a weekend series in San Diego as a club apparently headed for a fourth straight last-place finish.

But the Orioles clearly are pinning their hopes for a better future on young arms like Matusz, Tillman and recent call-up Jake Arrieta. For his part, Matusz was almost majors-ready when he came out of USD, a strikeout pitcher with extraordinary polish and guile.

“You never know what he’s going to do,” Tillman said. “Major league pitchers throw strikes with any pitch in any count, and that’s what (Matusz) does. He’ll throw any pitch any time, keeps you guessing, keeps you on your toes.”

Matusz’s pitching coach at USD, Eric Valenzuela, since has taken the same position at archrival San Diego State. That explains what Matusz was doing on Montezuma Mesa soon before heading to spring training. Also working out at his alma mater was right-hander Stephen Strasburg, whose first-ever start for the Aztecs came in a win over Matusz and the Toreros.

“The two of them started playing catch,” said Aztecs head coach Tony Gwynn. “I saw that and said, ‘Now there’s something special.’ ”

Some fans would’ve paid just to watch Strasburg — the No. 1 overall pick of 2009, the big league sensation of 2010 — and Matusz casually flip a baseball back and forth. The two are still close geographically, since Baltimore is the nearest thing in the majors to Washington, D.C., where Strasburg has made the biggest of first splashes with the Nationals.

“He’s a great kid, a really special pitcher who’s gotten a lot of hype and come through,” Matusz said. “We were just two guys playing catch, hanging out.”